There is a certain wistful nostalgia that we have when we think of our childhood homes. My father is certainly not immune to this. He was downright grumpy with me upon my first visit to his house because my appreciation was considerably dampened by the mosquitos feasting on me and the lack of a flushing toilet… However, upon a quick visit, I realized what my father loved about his home. He told stories about the Japanese coming to my grandmother during the war and asking for the steel embedded in the window frames. On the last trip we went on when she was still alive, she was quite happily content, sitting on the front porch.

Here are some photos of the front yard with the flora and fauna.

Interesting long-rooted vine.

This is a water plant of some kind.

Within each of these buds, a red tongued blossom is waiting…

Doesn’t this look soft?!

Down in the depths of the old well, the ferns grow. No worries, I didn’t lose my balance to get this shot!

WordPress decided that my original post was tasty for some odd reason and swallowed it up.

Grr.

Anyway, I came upon these roots:

And wondered why someone would put up a statue of one (Well, “statue” is a bit of a loosely used term here. It does seem to be more of an amusement park decoration…)

We stopped in at one of the stands and she peeled the root, and then rubbed it vigorously against a little bumpy grater, deftly scraping some of the paste off and onto moichi (little generally sweet sticky rice cakes dusted with flour which seem to be special to every tourist destination). After popping it into my mouth, the vigorous crisp taste surged through my throat and up my nose to drag tears from my popping eyes. After a determined swallow, I let my jaw drop so I could take a deep breath of soothing cool misty air.

The combination of moichi with this was rather odd.

I took a set of flavored peanuts back to Taipei to treat my colleagues and dare my students with. There is photographic representation of my sixth grade class breathing through their noses wide-awake, but I’m afraid of their just retribution were I to post it here….

And though it does have rather painfully decongestive properties, it wasn’t able to quite battle the nasty cold I brought back with me from Alishan.

Any guesses as to what this is?

ETA: Yup Herbert and Z, it’s wasabi– though there is a Chinese name for it that I don’t remember…